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An Adolescence with Rights?

In the neighbourhood I grew up in, Santa Rosa, in the province of Buenos Aires, the streets were unpaved, with a ditch of stagnant, foul-smelling water that flooded every block, since there were no sewers. Nor did it have a reliable electricity grid or safe drinking water. The house, made of exposed brick, had little more than some sheets of metal for a roof. In summer, it would heat up like an oven, whilst every time it rained, water would seep through and drip into pots and buckets, making it impossible to sleep. There was no school, no community health centre, nor any kind of public service to meet the basic needs of these humble, almost destitute families. This remains the reality of the country’s slums and shanty towns: a lack of even the most basic rights.

In our country, the National Registry of Popular Neighbourhoods (ReNaBap) currently lists 6,467 neighbourhoods living in precarious conditions. In many of these, a large number of people face challenges in obtaining the Family Housing Certificate. This is a legal instrument that recognises the family living there as the rightful occupants of the property and, consequently, allows them access to basic utilities such as electricity, water and gas—to the extent that these services are being rolled out in their neighbourhood.

In this context, children and teenagers grow up facing serious difficulties in developing a lifestyle in line with the rights recognised under the Argentine Constitution, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and various related regulations, which merely enshrine the minimum standard of what a child or adolescent should be able to access simply by virtue of being a person.

According to the latest UNICEF report (2025), around a third of households with children and teenagers in Argentina are unable to cover their day-to-day expenses, resulting in high levels of food insecurity and unmet basic needs.

Likewise, in terms of education, the evidence shows that school dropout rates rise with age. In other words, the highest proportion of adolescents dropping out of school is those aged 16 and 17. This is due to early entry into the labour market and the need to care for younger siblings, resulting from the precarious economic situation these families face and the household’s need for additional income.

In this regard, the social policy on educational achievement, which includes the provision of a grant known as PROGRESAR―created in 2014―, is proving to be a valuable tool in helping these young people cover the costs of their studies. This programme was expanded in 2022 to include 16- and 17-year-olds, responding to a latent demand that had not been addressed by any public policy until then. The data show how a programme of this kind is helping to strengthen the social conditions that enable these young people to complete secondary school.

The programme’s greatest challenge was keeping the grant up to date with the rising inflation in the local economy. Consequently, the National Ombudsman’s Office for Children and Adolescents repeatedly urged the Executive to establish an automatic adjustment mechanism. Nevertheless, this has not come to pass, and fixed increases have been implemented at intervals determined on a discretionary basis. Furthermore, there have recently been serious difficulties in establishing the latest enrolment periods, which effectively prevent the coverage of this social policy from being expanded.

On these last two issues, the report highlights the lack of clear and sustained intervention strategies backed by sufficient material and human resources: of the 4.1% of the national health budget, only 0.4% is allocated to policies targeting children and adolescents.

In short, there has been a serious deterioration in the living conditions of adolescents from low-income backgrounds. State intervention must not be limited to describing the context; it must also develop its strategies in consultation with this group.

Mapping Crime: Working-Class Neighbourhoods and Safety

The fact that working-class neighbourhoods are the hardest hit by insecurity in the country comes as no surprise. To cite one example, in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, the neighbourhoods that in 2025 accounted for the highest percentage of homicides are those located in the south of the city—along with the Mugica neighbourhood in Retiro—according to the City Government’s Crime Map. Similar trends have been recorded year after year, leading to the deployment of massive police operations with a constant presence in every neighbourhood.

Thus, over the past decade, the Southern Belt Operational Command (2011–2017) was in operation, deploying federal security forces—specifically, the National Gendarmerie and the Argentine Naval Prefecture. This intervention involved setting up security posts in different areas of each neighbourhood and, in turn, constant surveillance by officers patrolling each sector in three-man teams. However, over time, it also led to an increase in police violence, reflected in cases of arbitrary arrests, abuse, torture and even instances of extreme violence known as “trigger-happy” incidents. That is to say, homicides carried out by law enforcement officers.

Subsequently, in 2017, Mauricio Macri’s Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, disbanded this operation and transferred security responsibilities to the Buenos Aires City Police. The situation, however, did not change significantly: the crime map for this jurisdiction continued to show that neighbourhoods with the highest levels of poverty account for the highest percentage of homicides, whilst, from the accounts of the residents themselves, it is clear that police violence has not decreased either.

So we find ourselves before a paradox: despite being areas with a large number of police officers deployed on the ground, these remain the neighbourhoods that suffer most from insecurity. In this regard, community organisations have denounced that the State not only appears to ignore this situation, but even becomes a participant in a wide variety of crimes that increase levels of everyday violence.

In other words, it is precisely in those places where there is a lack of state control and the stigma of being a “villa” [1][1] In Argentina, the term “villa” most commonly refers to an informal settlement, shantytown, or slum—often historically called a villa miseria. These are high-density, unplanned neighborhoods characterized by precarious housing and often lacking basic infrastructure. that the security forces allow crime to occur. Otherwise, there is no explanation for why so many homicides are committed in areas “liberated” from the police presence, as they are popularly known.

At the same time, the issue of institutional violence—understood in this context as violence perpetrated by police officers against the civilian population—prevails in each of these neighbourhoods, particularly against teenagers and young men. This is evidenced in the latest report by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the City of Buenos Aires (2025), which states that 79.1% of the victims of this type of violence were male, with physical assault being the predominant form (75%). The xenophobia prevalent in police conduct is also evident, given that, of the total of 2,670 incidents of institutional violence, 83.7% involved foreign nationals. Finally, a consistent pattern emerges: both Commune 1—where the Mugica neighbourhood is located—and the neighbourhoods situated to the south of the City of Buenos Aires record the highest number of incidents of police violence.

Thus, neighbourhoods experiencing extreme vulnerability suffer from insecurity in two seemingly opposing ways: firstly, in the form of traditional street crime—robberies, thefts, homicides, etc.—and secondly, through the violent actions of the security forces.

Some accounts from local residents accurately describe what happens beneath the media’s silence and the judgemental gaze of the rest of society: “when they have to pretend they’re going to catch drug dealers, they raid the house of the neighbour next door whom they know is dealing, and obviously they find nothing but they smash everything up”; “they see the queues of destitute people waiting to buy drugs just metres from the security checkpoints and do nothing”; “they wait for them to leave the neighbourhood to arrest the ones who went to buy drugs, and often they don’t even register what they seize—they keep it for themselves”.

On the flip side, the voices of the boys and girls growing up in this context of extreme violence and marginalisation: “I was 13 and they took me to the checkpoint, burned cigarettes on my back and beat me”; “they locked me in a patrol car for hours, in summer, handcuffed, with the windows closed and the heating turned up to the max”; “they handcuffed me, threw me to the ground, kicked me and sprayed pepper spray in my face.”

In line with these testimonies, a video went viral months ago of a YouTuber being taught how to shoot by someone, shooting into the air in a passageway in the Mugica neighbourhood. Those images raised a logical question with a controversial answer: where were the police? They weren’t there, but from that day on, they were. A permanent police presence was established in that corridor thanks to the necessary social pressure sparked by the video. However, with the police’s presence came the mistreatment of local residents.

Lilian Andrade, a resident of the Mugica neighbourhood, recounts: “Although this has been going on for many years, what has changed is the level of cruelty; now there are far more children living on the streets and using drugs, many of whom are not from the neighbourhood—people get off nearby trains or buses and come here to buy drugs.”

She adds that “In these areas, it would be detrimental if anything were to happen, which is why the police patrol the area to ensure that nothing happens. But once the kids venture into other streets, they’re fair game for the police: that’s where the officers meet their daily arrest quotas. Another problem is that checks on cars and motorbikes aren’t carried out in accordance with the law: they seize your motorbike on a whim, even if you have all your paperwork in order.”

We must also highlight what happens to teenage girls and women in these neighbourhoods. In these “liberated” areas, many women aged between 20 and 30, with children, find themselves in a state of extreme vulnerability. When they are unable to pay the rent, it is common for the landlord to offer them payment in dollars in exchange for transporting drugs to other countries. With the promise of “a better life for their children”, these women end up imprisoned for drug trafficking and, ironically, are also subject to social judgment: “She didn’t think of her children”, people often say. In this case, gender acts as an aggravating factor, for when it is men who are imprisoned for drug trafficking, they are once again valued when they return to the community. This is not the case for women.

Another difficulty faced particularly by girls and women in these kinds of neighbourhoods is that, when they are victims of gender-based violence and restraining orders are issued, they do not receive the necessary police intervention to ensure compliance. And there is little point in granting such orders if the perpetrator can flout them with impunity because of the absence of police in these neighbourhoods.

It is also the case that many do not want to go to police stations to file a report because they know they will not be treated properly and that much of their account will be omitted from the police record. This deliberate omission on the part of the police is also a form of institutional violence and results in women ultimately choosing to seek help from other women in the community or from an organisation rather than reporting the incident.

Young women in these neighbourhoods are also exposed to arbitrary arrests. When these occur, it is common for police officers not to provide any information as to why they are being detained or where they are being taken. With greater access to mobile phones and means of recording, the most serious acts of violence are committed inside police vans, where the girls are most vulnerable to beatings or inappropriate touching. Gender continues to act as an aggravating factor in this regard, just as sexual orientation, skin colour or nationality exacerbate the discrimination already suffered by anyone living in one of these vulnerable neighbourhoods.

Segregation by area is so clear that, even within the same neighbourhood, some bus stops have greater protection than others. This is the case, for example, in the Mugica neighbourhood, where the City’s Ministry of Education is located. In that part of the neighbourhood, there are bus stops with security—those used by people going to work at the Ministry—whilst others are completely neglected. The entire police deployment is strategically controlled so that, in areas where drugs are sold or where people who do not live in the neighbourhood are present, robberies or criminal acts are not committed; whilst in the rest of the neighbourhood, there is no active police presence.

Another form of institutional violence against women concerns access to housing. In the Mugica neighbourhood, rental signs openly state “for single people or men”, as there is a prejudice that women with children will end up squatting the property. For this reason, there are many cases where, faced with a delay in payment, the landlord calls the police, and they forcibly evict a woman and her family, leaving them on the street without even a court order.

Women pay higher rents due to this gender bias, and in many cases end up indebted and resort to local loan sharks, ultimately becoming victims of threats and abuse at their behest. There have been cases where, when rent payments are late, women have been beaten by these extortionists, left unconscious in their homes with their children left alone.

Thus, in these vulnerable communities, residents often do not know whether it is better to have a permanent police presence to defend them against certain forms of abuse or whether, on the contrary, and in the face of inaction or abuse by the officers themselves, this presence constitutes yet another threat. The fact is that, in a way, the neighbourhood’s inhabitants end up being held hostage by the very police forces they, in a sense, require.

Crime Prevention or Persecution of Adolescents?

When examining the profiles of those arrested, it is clear that “criminal policy”, specifically aimed at tackling street criminality, primarily affects young men under the age of 34 (according to official statistics from the National System of Statistics on the Enforcement of Sentences, 2024).

A similar pattern is observed among adolescents: the General Database on Children and Adolescents of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (2024) indicates that the majority of those entering the juvenile justice system are boys, a pattern that is consistent across the country.

These figures take on particular significance in a context where legislation to lower the age of criminal responsibility for adolescents has been debated repeatedly. The latest bill, presented by Javier Milei’s government, was passed in March and will take effect in September 2026.

This represents a serious setback in the promotion and protection of the rights of children and adolescents—particularly the latter—and disregards the repeated observations of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, which urged our leaders not to lower the age. Not only because, once the new law comes into force, police action will be directed—under the conditions already mentioned—against 14- and 15-year-old boys and girls to subject them to punitive measures, but also because attempting to tackle youth crime or drug use through security and criminal justice policies is not in line with the root causes of these issues. These originate in the violations of rights experienced by these young people and should be addressed at the administrative level through social services and public policies focused on prevention and support.

Furthermore, the guiding principles of the juvenile criminal justice system have been revised, moving beyond the paradigm of social integration, resocialisation and the education of adolescents, and now also encompassing the concepts of “overcoming social risk” and the “conflictual behaviour evidenced in the commission of the offence”. In other words, the focus has shifted away from the adolescent as a subject of rights to be protected, towards also emphasising the concept of social order promoted by the current government, based on punitive policies.

As for the reasons for the arrests, the majority are linked to robbery and theft. What must be borne in mind, however, is that these offences often conceal situations involving drug or alcohol use, or debts linked to gambling and betting—the latter being a growing problem. Instead of trying to solve everything through more incarceration, the government should recognise the complexity of these issues and find appropriate, effective solutions. The sad reality is that, behind the logic of mass incarceration, lies the desire to lock up and remove from ‘respectable society’ anything considered a nuisance.

The related literature has amply demonstrated that increased incarceration and harsher sentences only exacerbate the problems they aim to eradicate, whilst also creating new ones. Imprisonment entails not only the loss of personal liberty but also the severing of family ties and emotional bonds for adolescents. One must also take into account the psychological impact: it triggers problems linked to the development of mental health disorders, which, in turn, can lead to self-harming behaviour or situations that put young people’s physical safety at risk.

All of this completely deprives adolescents of any possibility of developing a life project in line with their interests and of reintegrating into society. In this regard, testimonies such as Maximiliano Castillo’s are telling. He has been arrested on numerous occasions since the age of 13, and since the age of 16 has been held in detention centres for adolescents—only to be eventually transferred to an adult prison unit run by the Federal Prison Service: “I was just a few months old when my mum was arrested; my great-grandparents kept their distance, so I grew up differently. As a child, I had a passion for art and music. I used to sing. At 13, I started to give up music, and that’s when my rebellious phase began; I started stealing and taking drugs.”

Maxi was known in his neighbourhood as a pibe [2][2] A colloquial term used to refer to young lads. who “got up to no good”—in other words, who stole. Neighbours said he terrorised the neighbourhood. “I was on the wrong track,” he says. He explains that in places like his, kids start fending for themselves from a very young age, because their mums, dads or carers work long hours to earn the few pesos needed to feed them and keep them going. So, he started hanging out on the streets, taking drugs and stealing. He spent six years and two months in detention, first at the Manuel Belgrano Institute and then at the Ezeiza Federal Prison Complex. Whilst housed at the former, he published his first book, which he wrote at the age of 18 and presented at 19, in 2023, about his journey through the youth justice system.

The book, a collection of poems entitled “Little Feelings in a Yellow World”, is a living testimony to the effects of directing punitive power against impoverished youth. It is also a testimony to police violence and a juvenile justice system which, far from supporting adolescents, traps them in a cycle of abuse, harassment and neglect. A clear demonstration of the need to design public policies that are genuinely sustainable, backed by resources but also with a humane approach, enabling young people to overcome the circumstances that led them to commit offences.

The piece, which serves as the conclusion to this article, includes a term from prison and street slang that speaks for itself: “tumberos”, as prisoners are called, as prisoners call themselves. Tumberos, as in “grave dwellers”. Because the confinement and marginalisation with which the system excludes them are like being dead before one’s time.

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